Why I Named My Practice After My Grandmother

There is a name I have carried close to my heart for as long as I can remember. 

Ebla.

This is my grandmother's name. A woman known for her fierce independence, her courage, and her absolute refusal to be silenced in a world that often asked women like her to be quieter, smaller, easier to manage. She did not shrink. She did not apologize for the space she took up. She moved through life with a dignity that was entirely her own, and it left an impression on everyone who knew her.

When I started building this practice, I tried on a lot of different names. Clinical-sounding ones. Safe ones. Names that would fit neatly into a directory and not raise eyebrows. Names that would signal professionalism without asking too much of anyone who came across them. But none of them felt like mine. None of them felt like the work I actually wanted to do or the women I actually wanted to serve.

And then I came back to her name.

Naming this practice Ebla was not sentiment, though the sentiment is real and it matters. It was a declaration. A commitment that every woman who walks through these doors, virtually, across Ontario, would be treated with the same dignity my grandmother carried in her bones. That she would not have to earn her place here. That she would not have to prove her experiences before they were taken seriously. That the space would meet her with understanding, curiosity, and respect from the very beginning. 

There was something else, too, that I want to share with you.

In Somali, the phrase ceeb la means without shame. And shame, I had come to understand over fifteen years of working in community-based mental health settings in Toronto, was one of the biggest reasons the women I most wanted to serve were not getting support.

The need was there. The pain was there. But so often, asking for help felt loaded with meaning. For some, it felt like admitting they could not handle things on their own. For others, it felt at odds with the image they had worked so hard to uphold: the strong woman, the faithful woman, the dependable woman, the one everyone else could count on.

Somewhere along the way, many had come to believe that struggling should be carried quietly. That needing support reflected a personal failing rather than a human reality. And so they kept going, often long after they had reached their limit.

I wanted to create something different.

Ebla Therapy exists because ceeb la, without shame, is exactly the energy this work requires. As a Black Muslim therapist in Ontario, I built this practice specifically for Muslim women, immigrant women, and racialized women who have been waiting for a space that truly understands them. A space where culturally responsive therapy is not a marketing phrase but the actual foundation of every single session. A space where your background, your faith, your family dynamics, and your history are not complications to work around but the very starting point of the work.

The women who find their way here are often women who have been holding a great deal for a very long time. Women who are high-achieving and exhausted. Women who love their families deeply and are quietly overwhelmed by the weight of that love. Women who have tried to access support before and spent the entire session explaining the basics of who they are to someone who nodded politely but did not truly understand.

You deserve better than that. You have always deserved better than that.

If you have ever sat with the idea of therapy and immediately felt a wave of guilt or embarrassment about it, I want you to know something. I built this for you. You do not have to earn the right to be supported. You do not have to have it all figured out before you reach out. You just have to be willing to take one small step toward yourself. And we will meet you right there.